So I first heard of Local Three last week here in Charlotte. Chef Chris Hall was in Charlotte for Charlotte Food and Wine. I enjoyed him, so I sought his restaurant out in Atlanta. My experience was very good. The Vidalia Onion Soup and the Hoppin John were both excellent. But the cost was excessive for lunch. So although I would recommend the food (it was delicious!), I would not recommend the restaurant unless you are on an expense account.

One friend may offer us affection, another may stimulate our minds, another may strengthen our souls. The more able we are to receive the different gifts our friends have to give us, the more able we will be to offer our own unique but limited gifts. Thus, friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.

Freshman Shames Ivy League College with His Personal Story About ‘White Privilege’, Princeton University: Worth reading and thinking about …

My exploration did yield some results. I recognize that it was my parents’ privilege and now my own that there is such a thing as an American dream which is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant.

I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad. It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.

18 Things to Eat, Buy, and Do in Puerto Rico, KieroCoco Coconut Water, food & drink: I loved Puerto Rico, so I thought I would share this list.

Fresh coconut juice is one of the great, unsung pleasures in life, and I’m not ashamed to say I marched around El Mercado cradling a giant coconut pierced with a frilly cocktail umbrella. At the KieroCoco stand, from whence it came, you select your coconut (rounder ones are juicier; browner ones are sweeter), and then drill into it with the help of a hand-cranked doohickey attached to a mobile cart.

2.4.13 … Becoming Kind … | Dennard’s Clipping Service: Everyone once a while I notice repeated returns to one post. With this post, originally it was because of the cone of shame cartoon. But later, I am not sure what has drawn the interest to this 2.4.13 … Becoming Kind … I then laughed at myself because a post that is entitled, “Becoming Kind,” leads with a cartoon referenced as “cone of shame.”

New Yorker Cartoons, The New Yorker, cell phones, cone of shame, LOL: I deserve a cone of shame …

Downton Abbey, Dowager, quotes: The Dowager, she gets all the good quotes!

Albert Schweitzer, quotes, A Mighty Girl: A Might Girl is one of my favorite source for quotes.

“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” — Albert Schweitzer

via A Mighty Girl.

just a thought …, Henri Nouwen, Tolstoi, kindness:

Here is the great challenge: All people, whatever their color, religion, or sex, belong to humankind and are called to be kind to one another, treating one another as brothers and sisters. There is hardly a day in our lives in which we are not called to this.

Nothing can make our lives, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness. – Leo Tolstoy in A Calendar of Wisdom

via Nothing can make our lives, or the lives of other… • literary jukebox.

when bad things happen …, What Gives 365: From one of my favorite blogs …

I went to church this morning wanting to thank the universe for sparing us … but that assumes, of course, that the universe would have been punishing us had things turned out differently. And therein lies the shame and guilt when bad things happen. The truth is a terrible accident can happen to anyone, at any time, and often there is nobody to blame. But that reality is awfully terrifying to admit; we want our universe to make more sense than that and we want to feel as if our good intentions and conduct will spare us from tragedy.

And I am especially grateful for the phrasing Vance Polley used in remembering his father’s passions for his community, his college, his church, his beloved theatrical stage: “He wasn’t just passionate about things he cared about. He was passionate about lifting up things we should all care about.”

Legendary comedian Robin Williams meets the most famous gorilla in the world, Koko, who is fluent in American sign language. Hilariously, Koko and Williams have an epic tickle fight just shortly after meeting one another.

Dayton’s success caused Krzyzewski’s criticism to ring hollow, especially since Coach K and his Blue Devils stumbled out of the gate against 14-seed Mercer in the tournament’s biggest upset. Yet aside from the Flyers’ out-of-the-blue tournament run, the conference as a whole was shaky at best through the tournament’s first weekend. Were it not for Tyler Lewis’s jumper rimming out at the buzzer against Saint Louis, the A-10 would have seen five of its six teams bow out in the Round of 64. Certainly the Atlantic 10 will field steep competition for the Davidson men’s and women’s basketball squads next year. But in light of this year’s flimsy performance, the conference will just as certainly receive fewer bids next time around, adding to the Wildcats’ difficult task of earning at-large bids in future seasons.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, A Stroke Leads a Brain Scientist to a New Spirituality – NYTimes.com:

Her desire to teach others about nirvana, Dr. Taylor said, strongly motivated her to squeeze her spirit back into her body and to get well.

This story is not typical of stroke victims. Left-brain injuries don’t necessarily lead to blissful enlightenment; people sometimes sink into a helplessly moody state: their emotions run riot. Dr. Taylor was also helped because her left hemisphere was not destroyed, and that probably explains how she was able to recover fully.

Today, she says, she is a new person, one who “can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere” on command and be “one with all that is.”

To her it is not faith, but science. She brings a deep personal understanding to something she long studied: that the two lobes of the brain have very different personalities. Generally, the left brain gives us context, ego, time, logic. The right brain gives us creativity and empathy. For most English-speakers, the left brain, which processes language, is dominant. Dr. Taylor’s insight is that it doesn’t have to be so.

Her message, that people can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life by sidestepping their left brain, has resonated widely.

Adult Read: Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy was way ahead of its time. It deals with difference in class: Harriet is upper-middle-class, whereas her best friend has an absent mother and an absent-minded father, and knows how to pay bills and balance a budget at the age of 11. Fitzhugh has Harriet go to a therapist long before this was the thing to do with “problem children.” The issue of privacy—which is on everyone’s minds recently—comes to the forefront when Harriet’s secret notebook is passed around between all the kids in her class who then stop talking to her because she wrote mean things about everyone. It’s a book to pick apart (a new way to enjoy it) now that the years of wanting-to-be-Harriet have passed.

When Pope Benedict XVI announced he was stepping down as pope a year ago — dropping the news almost casually, in Latin, at a meeting about an upcoming canonization — nobody was sure what to call it. No living pope had handed off the keys of St. Peter since Gregory XII in 1415. If Pope Benedict had only waited some 14 months to announce his retirement — or abdication, or vacation — we might have had an apt phrase at the ready: Conscious uncoupling.

I was not surprised when I saw the news reports of Marcus Paige’s appearance, along with a few other athletes, at the UNC Board of Trustees this week. They were there representing the top sports: football, basketball, soccer and lacrosse- all teams who are the pride of UNC. I laughed when I saw Paige’s quote. ‘Trust Me. We can all read.” I laughed because it seemed like the kind of smart quote a PR major might turn to after he’d witnesses all the bad coverage of UNC athletics that have filled the newspapers and airwaves of late. If there had been UNC athletes who had been cheated out of a first rate education and channeled into weak courses and sham majors that didn’t’ demand much – Paige was making it clear he was not one of those athletes.

Jerry Reid will graduate from the University of Virginia this spring with a résumé that would attract the attention of any potential employer.

Under extracurricular activities, Mr. Reid lists membership in a campus literary society, brotherhood in a fraternity and two intramural flag-football championships. His academic accomplishments include a thesis reinterpreting Stonewall Jackson’s legacy. He counts rooting for Virginia’s men’s basketball team as his primary hobby.

Are you a March Madness basketball fanatic? Do you bow at the altar of the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament? If the answer is no, Simon Constable explains why you should care.

Then there is his work experience: 45 years as a conveyor-belt salesman.

Tha Hugs, kith/kin: At the Georgia Theater in Athens. See Tha Hugs on the Marque!

Ed Lindsey for Congress:

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

Georgia has recovered more than $60 million that was lost to Medicaid fraud

Edward Lindsey on Thursday, March 20th, 2014 in press release

Lawmaker’s claim on Medicaid fraud recovery correct

,,,

Our conclusion: Georgia has submitted documentation to the feds that it has recovered $159.4 million lost to Medicaid fraud in three years in both federal and state money. Lindsey was very conservative in saying the amount recouped was “more than $60 million.”

Switching over to daylight saving time and losing one hour of sleep raised the risk of having a heart attack the following Monday by 25%, compared to other Mondays during the year, according to a new US study released on Saturday.

By contrast, heart attack risk fell 21% later in the year, on the Tuesday after the clock was returned to standard time, and people got an extra hour’s sleep.

The not-so-subtle impact of moving the clock forward and backward was seen in a comparison of hospital admissions from a database of non-federal Michigan hospitals. It examined admissions before the start of daylight saving time and the Monday immediately after, for four consecutive years.

In general, heart attacks historically occur most often on Monday mornings, maybe due to the stress of starting a new work week and inherent changes in our sleep-wake cycle, said Dr Amneet Sandhu, a cardiology fellow at the University of Colorado in Denver who led the study.

“With daylight saving time, all of this is compounded by one less hour of sleep,” said Sandhu, who presented his findings at the annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in Washington.

A link between lack of sleep and heart attacks has been seen in previous studies. But Sandhu said experts still don’t have a clear understanding of why people are so sensitive to sleep-wake cycles. “Our study suggests that sudden, even small changes in sleep could have detrimental effects,” he said.

At Davidson College, we are using new technologies both to expand our impact and to ensure that Davidson can lead in this new environment through four key strategies: 1) seeking out talented young people from around the country and world irrespective of their financial circumstances, enabling them to thrive at Davidson and beyond; 2) building a challenging curricula based on students doing original work, so that they graduate with a portfolio of work, rather than simply a transcript with grades; 3) offering students significant opportunities in emerging crucial fields, like computer science, global languages, computational biology, cognitive sciences, digital studies, and environmental studies; and 4) moving our students efficiently from our campus to meaningful work in the world.

Ultimately, our societal value is measured by what our graduates do, the lives they lead, and the impact they exert. The world is changing quickly, and we can’t wait. Join us.

In a new poll regarding the District 11 U.S. House candidates in the May 20 primary election, Bob Barr leads the six Republicans running for the seat being vacated by incumbent Phil Gingrey, who is running for U.S. Senate. The district includes Vinings and parts of Buckhead and Sandy Springs.

In favorability ratings, Barr led the way with 38 percent, followed by Loudermilk (26 percent), Lindsey (21 percent) and Pridemore (9 percent). The poll has an accuracy of plus or minus 5.7 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval.

Los Angeles Dodgers, The New York Yankees, Highest Payroll, Business Insider:

However, for the first time since 1998, the Yankees do not have the largest payroll in baseball. That distinction now belongs to the Dodgers with an estimated 2014 payroll of $235 million, up 147% in two years and $32 million more than the Yankees.

2014-2015 Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, Davidson NC natives: Congratulations to two Davidson natives, neighbors and friends and fellow Watson winners, one from Williams and the other from Wellesley. How extraordinary is that?

CONGRATULATIONS TO ELOISE AND BEATRICE

The winners of the 2014-2015 Thomas J. Watson Fellowships were announced on March 15 and two young ladies who grew up in Davidson were among the recipients. Congratulations to Eloise Andry, daughter of M.C. and Allain Andry and to Beatrice Denham, daughter of Cathy and Scott Denham. To make this award even more meaningful, the Denhams and Andrys are next door neighbors in Davidson and the girls have known each other since birth.

For Eloise, it’s Volcanoes

Eloise Andry is a senior at Williams College and will use her year of study to explore how humans living nearby view and interact with volcanoes. Her winning proposal is entitled Solid as a Rock? Life on a Volcano and will take Eloise to a number of countries including Iceland, Chile, New Zealand, Vanuatu and Indonesia. A member of Phi Beta Kappa at Williams, Eloise is majoring in Chinese and geosciences. Regarding this prestigious award, Eloise remarked, “I am thrilled to have received a Watson Fellowship, and very lucky to have this opportunity to study something I care so much about. As my friends know, I love rocks, but volcanoes are simply the best.”

The contents of a recent email were too good not to share. It seems that last Thursday, March 20, was the date 98 years ago in 1916 that Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity. He began working on this theory shortly after he published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, which is centered on the famous equation E=mc2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared) and explains that both time and motion are relative to the observer. To further explain, Einstein humorously noted: “When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”

photos, 2014 Winter: I loved this picture from a Facebook friend and her friend’s comment: “Exquisite example of determination and perseverance.” Sad or beautiful??

Athens GA music scene, history: Loved this … I was actually living in Athens in the early to mid 80s.

After a year of living off the land I finally got a job in town, and met the ‘bohemian underground of Athens’, partly fueled by the Art School at the University of Georgia. There was a strong fraternity and sorority element at the school but my new friends ran with the wild crowd! Together, we formed a creative group of people including art students, poets, writers, experimental musicians, storytellers and true eccentrics. We crashed parties for free beer, crashed the Circus, the only disco in town, and danced crazy. When UGA showed Fellini’s films, Jeremy Ayers hosted a Fellini party where blazing cocktails were served and Felliniesque costumes were required.

We had Parties where we would dance to ‘silent music’ at the secret garden on UGA campus – we’d dance in the cemetery and at John Taylor’s house. Once, out in the cow pasture by my house, we listened to an African tribal music tape on loan from the UGA music library. Ricky Wilson placed his boom box in the field where we drew a circle of cows around us who bobbed their heads to the music while we danced. Everything we did was for ‘art’ and for pure amusement, since we had to make our own fun. Everyone was interesting and we all in the ‘deadbeat club’ had time to listen and cherish the moment and each other. Anyone could join in, as long as they were open to all possibilities. The mantra was, ‘everyone is a genius’ ! Or, as Megan Timberlake famously said, ‘Together we’re a genius’ !

This scene was truly the beginning of many imaginative endeavors, including the birth of the B-52s. This creative atmosphere, born in part from the Art School, and UGA f

Girl Scout Cookie Sales, Record Broken, Oklahoma Girl Scout, People.com: When I saw this on twitter, I immediately wondered if she was from Colorado. But no, she’s from Oklahoma. 🙂

An Oklahoma City girl, who says she asks everyone she meets to buy Girl Scout cookies, has broken the organization’s decades-old sales record by a margin about the size of a Thin Mint.

Katie Francis of Oklahoma City sold 18,107 boxes in the seven-week sales period that ended Sunday night. The previous mark was set by Elizabeth Brinton, who sold approximately 18,000 one year in the 1980s.

The sixth-grade student told The Oklahoman newspaper last month that there were only three ingredients needed to rack up large sales: a lot of time, a lot of commitment and asking everyone she met to buy.

Air France said Wednesday that a plane carrying 495 passengers and 22 crew was diverted on its way from Shanghai to Paris after Russia closed part of its airspace because of the launch of a Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station.

The company said flight AF111 was forced to land in Hamburg, Germany, early Wednesday to refuel because the plane had too little fuel to complete the flight following its unexpected detour.

Hamburg Airport confirmed that the Airbus A380 landed shortly after 6 a.m. (0500 GMT) and was able to take off for Paris again after an hour and a half.

In a statement, Air France said the airspace closure was due to a military exercise. Later company spokeswoman Ulli Gendrot said the airspace closure was a result of the launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz booster rocket lifted off as scheduled at 3:17 a.m. local time Wednesday (2117 GMT Tuesday) from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

2014 Wedding Music Trends and Song Lists, 25 Best Shag/Beach Music Songs for your Party: Enjoy!

The All Around Raleigh DJ Company is based in Raleigh, NC and specializes in DJ’ing for weddings, private parties, corporate events, bar mitzvahs, pool parties and any other event where you need great music!

Dr. Skoot Dimon, RIP, Atlanta, Brookwood Hills: Dr. Dimon was one of the characters in my wonderful childhood in Brookwood Hills. Condolences to his wonderful wife and great family. He made life better for those in his sphere and his healing gift as an orthopedic surgeon blessed many including blessing my father with years of horrible but pain-free golf.

“Skoot Dimon was a world-class orthopedic surgeon, and as fine and loving a person as I have ever known. Those of us fortunate enough to have lived close to him have seen man at his best.” (Mike Brumby, son-in-law)

Claire Johnson, 50, and Mark Gaffey, 51, said it was their guide dogs who fell in love first.

Claire and Mark first met when they brought their dogs to a training class. Their two Labrador Retrievers, Venice and Rodd, got along famously. The trainers commented that the two dogs were besotted with one another. “The trainers said that they were the love and romance of the course, and they brought us together, said Mark.

Claire and Mark discovered they lived only a mile and a half from one another and after their course ended they arranged to meet for coffee. As their coffee dates grew longer and longer, the pair fell in love.

…

“Now we joke that with every guide dog you get a free wife. I love Claire’s personality and her laugh is infectious. We’ve never had an argument, we just seem to click.”

photos, childrens bedrooms: wonderful photos! You will have to look. I loved them!

Millions of people from around the world are currently experiencing very different childhoods. Some are living in abject poverty, lacking basic food and sanitation, while others are more fortunate by being born in a country where those things are guaranteed and usually taken for granted.

When photographer James Mollison was asked to come up with an idea for engaging with children’s rights, he found himself thinking of his bedroom: how significant it was during his childhood, and how it reflected what he had and who he was.

And with that, he made it his mission to create Where Children Sleep – a collection of stories about children from around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms.

2014 Lenten Labyrinth Walks: Oh, no … the very brief wintry mix late this afternoon completely knocked out my commitment to “walk.” Good thing I can double up tomorrow. God is forgiving. 🙂

9 Rules for Naked Dining: The Etiquette of Nude Resorts, Bon Appétit: What is it with the naked everything? And that word is one of those words that make me snicker .., I always pronounce it “neck-ed.” And of course, a friend reminded me of Lewis Grizzard: You know Lewis Grizzard used to say that “nekkid” meant you were without clothes and up to something as opposed to being naked which meant you just didn’t have on clothes! 🙂

9 Rules for Naked Dining: The Etiquette of Nude Resorts – Bon Appétit

Nine rules to follow when dining at a nude resort, from where to place a napkin to whether or not to Instagram

Once upon a time, etiquette was important: One needed to know which fork to use, which glass to sip from. Those days, my friends, are over. Now, questions of etiquette mainly revolve around how many Instagrams each guest is allowed to take during dinner.

But there remains one corner of the world where table etiquette remains a vexing and important issue: at nude resorts. And it’s a problem for a growing number of people.

“We’re seeing a rise in ‘nakations,’ especially among people in their thirties,’” says Sue Nerud, spokesperson for the American Association for Nude Recreation. Exact statistics are hard to come by, however, since many nudists prefer to remain anonymous. (In fact, several nudists in this article spoke only on the condition their names not be used.) And while Nerud said recent studies show that nakations are great stress relievers, there remain those pesky etiquette issues—which we are about to solve for you!

Duke Blue Devils, Mike Krzyzewski, Coach K, Mercer University, 2014 NCAA Basketball Tournament, March Madness, UGA Law School Class of ’85 : I am not a fan of Duke and definitely a fan of Coach K. But I am glad to know he knows how to be good sport and a gentleman. And don’t you fellow UGA Law School “85 Classmates love the connection to Ellen and Bobby!!

Say what you want about the Duke Blue Devils and head coach Mike Krzyzewski, but what Coach K did after losing to the Mercer Bears was classy.

After the 78-71 loss to No. 14 Mercer, Coach K went into the Bears’ locker room to congratulate the team on the win. According to Nicole Auerbach from USA Today, Krzyzewski told the Bears, “If we got beaten, at least we got beaten by a hell of a basketball team.”

William Dyer, a Delt from Georgia (and proud son of Bobby and Ellen) was the brains behind today’s HUGE upset win by Mercer over Duke. William, the graduate assistant coach for the Mercer Bears, was the chief strategist in what will no doubt go down as one of the biggest shockers in NCAA history.

** Ok – William IS the son of Bobby and Ellen, he IS a Delt and he IS the graduate assistant coach at Mercer. As for the rest of that… well, that’s the story I am telling and I am sticking to it !

Flight MH370, The Wall Street Journal: I cannot help myself. I am human like the rest of us. I want to know where the plane is. I want closure.

It is with “deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.” said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. http://on.wsj.com/1hfLCcv

The exclusive program awards both the expert and the up-and-coming professional with free first-class tickets to their destination. During the flight, the two are free to discuss their respective fields. Hopefully, they gain insight and valuable knowledge along the way.

“We have customers flying with us who are big thinkers and innovators and are changing the world,” Mauricio Parise, Delta’s director of worldwide marketing communications, told CNBC. “We want to bring the ones succeeding in their field together with people who aspire to follow them.”

According to Delta, the first two participants were Eric Migicovsky, the inventor of the Pebble Smartwatch, and James Patten, an interaction designer. The two flew to the 2014 TED Conference in Vancouver, B.C., last week.

“It’s very rare to get the chance to sit down with someone in that sort of position and talk about whatever you want,” Patten said in a video for Delta after the flight. “Had we met in another context we probably would have at, at most, a five-minute conversation.”

Delta’s next Innovation Class flight will feature Sean Brock, an executive chef, on a flight from Charleston, S.C., to the James Beard Awards in New York. To apply for the open seat next to Brock, or to see a list of upcoming flights, visit the Delta Innovation Class website.

A recent study has shown that if American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go fucking ape shit.

The study was conducted by Susan Waterson, a professor of behavioral psychology at the University of Massachusetts and the author of zero books, because, Waterson says, “another book at this point would just be cruel.” In the course of seven weeks, Waterson interviewed a hundred and twenty-seven families about their reaction to articles that begin with a wryly affectionate parenting anecdote, segue into a dry cataloguing of sociological research enlivened with alternately sarcastic and tender asides, and end with another wryly affectionate anecdote that aims to add a touch of irony or, failing at that, sentimentality. “I wasn’t looking to prove there was too much of this content,” Waterson said. “I’m a behaviorist, not a sociologist. Only one part of this equation interested me—the fucking-ape-shit part.”

Kids These Days: Growing Up Too Fast Or Never At All? : NPR: As I have said before, I had an idyllic childhood in Brookwood Hills Atlanta. I heard this on NPR. I too wonder if we don’t fantasize how much better it was when we were children?

On the cover of the April issue of The Atlantic there’s a picture of a boy who could be 6 or 7. He’s looking to the right toward an adult, whose hand he’s holding. He’s also wearing a helmet and knee pads. And — for further protection — he has a pillow strapped to his torso.

Hanna Rosin says when kids do things that feel risky on a playground, it allows them to conquer a fear and gain independence.

In an interview with All Things Considered, Rosin tells host Robert Siegel that she had long wondered why statistics show that today’s parents both work more and spend more time with their children than previous generations. She says it has to do with the lack of independence people allow their children these days.

“What’s happened now is we’ve swung way too far in the other direction such that we’ve become preoccupied with safety, and that’s really having an effect on the culture of childhood so that we’re stripping children of their independence, of their ability to take risks, which are key to a happy childhood,” she says.

Son Of God Movie, “Diogo Morgado Puts the Carnal in Incarnate But Was Jesus Really A Babe?” The Daily Beast: Speaking of Jesus … With my mom — watching Son Of God at CineBistro at Town Brookhaven. I found no time to consider whether the actor was a “babe.” Both my mother and I were overwhelmed by the gruesome aspects of the film. We realize that death by crucifixion is by its nature gruesome.

Son of God is in theaters now! This major motion picture event brings the story of Jesus’ life to audiences of all kinds through compelling …

Dog, $1.9 Million, News from the Field | OutsideOnline.com, conspicuous consumption, Tibetan mastiffs: Wow! Many years ago we had a Saint Bernard. A friend quipped that we should have named him Thorstein. I’ll let you figure that one out.

In what might be the most expensive dog sale ever, a property developer paid 12 million yuan—or $1.9 million—for a Tibetan mastiff puppy on Wednesday.

He acquired the one-year-old golden-haired mastiff at a “luxury pet” fair Tuesday in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang, according to the Qianjiang Evening News.

“They have lion’s blood and are top-of-the-range mastiff studs,” the dog’s breeder, Zhang Gengyun, told the paper. Another of his red-haired pups sold for six million yuan, he added.

Tibetan mastiffs, which are enormous and sometimes ferocious, bear a passing resemblance to lions—if you squint. They’re now a prized status symbol among China’s elite, causing prices to skyrocket.

Elizabeth Kiss, Rhodes Scholars: Great day to be a Wildcat! Check out #13 …

13. Elizabeth Kiss is an American academic and educator. She is the eighth president of Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts college for women in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously, she was the Nannerl E. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. She specialises in moral and political philosophy and has published on a number of topics, including moral judgement and education, human rights, ethnic conflict and nationalism, and feminist debates about rights and justice. As a Rhodes Scholar, she studied for a BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy.

Watch the video above to see the first Basset Hound “magic trick” you’ve probably ever seen. Just when you think it isn’t possible for any more dogs to appear, another one comes running out of that teeny, tiny, little dog house.

New Yorker cartoon, Paul Noth, Jackson Pollock, kith/kin: Another one today that reminded me of my son. Jack taught me taught me to appreciate Pollock and with whom i love to enjoy sushi. I realize that there is a difference between “appreciating ” Pollock and “liking” Pollock. Jack did his high school “senior exit project” on Pollock. I learned so much and learned to “appreciate” Pollock.

The ‘singing’ stones of Stonehenge, Bath Chronicle, favorites, thin places: Love this place and the ancient-ness of it. Now Ifind out it sings! My sis and I visited when I was 18, and we hunted for her boyfriend’s initials which he supposedly had carved in a stone as a teen. You could walk all around the stones way back when …

It has long been a mystery to even the most learned expert of the Stonehenge monument – what is so special about the stone in west Wales that it was worth carting 180 miles to Salisbury Plain?

Most theories concentrated on how the famous bluestones of the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire can be buffed up to a strikingly polished shine. But now experts in the arts, rather than archaeology, have come up with a different theory – and it is not to do with how they look, but how the sound.

Researchers from the Royal College of Art in London spent months taking one lump of stone and tapping it on more than 1,000 rocks in the Carn Menyn area of the Preseli hills, and discovered something so remarkable it may well rewrite the history books about Stonehenge.

The bluestones ‘sing’ when they are hit, resonating with an apparently unique twang that does not appear to reach the same pitch or musical note as other stones which merely ‘thud’.

Some previous theories surrounding Stonehenge’s sonic qualities – the way the stone circle would have captured and reverberated sound – had been rather dismissed by the experts concentrating on astronomy and landscape, but the new study appears to reinforce the importance of sound, and the sonic qualities of the stones themselves.

“We found it was a noteworthy soundscape, with a significant percentage of the actual rocks making metallic sounds like bells, gongs, tin drums, etc, when tapped with small, handheld ‘hammerstones’,” said Paul Devereux, the study’s co-leader, a research associate at the college and an expert in archaeo-acoustics.

It is a phenomenon anyone sitting inside the stone circle during the summer solstice celebrations each year amid the cacophony of a dozen or so drummers can attest to.

“The stones may have been thought to have magical, qualities, mana, because of their exceptional sonic nature,” he added.

Following a successful campaign on Indiegogo which raised nearly $26,000, artist Sipho Mabona followed through on his promise to fold a life-sized elephant from a single giant sheet of paper. The piece stands over 10 feet tall (3 meters) and took a team of nearly a dozen people over four weeks to fold. The final sculpture is on view at KKLB in Beromünster, Switzerland. Photos by Philipp Schmidli. (via My Modern Met)

Delaware man’s self-penned obit takes internet by storm, abc11.com, Walter George Bruhl Jr.: I love a good obit! I “will do an unexpected and unsolicited act of kindness for some poor unfortunate soul in his name.”

Walter George Bruhl Jr. of Newark and Dewey Beach is a dead person; he is no more; he is bereft of life; he is deceased; he has rung down the curtain and gone to join the choir invisible; he has expired and gone to meet his maker.

He drifted off this mortal coil Sunday, March 9, 2014, in Punta Gorda, Fla. His spirit was released from his worn-out shell of a body and is now exploring the universe.

…

Everyone who remembers him is asked to celebrate Walt’s life in their own way; raising a glass of their favorite drink in his memory would be quite appropriate.

Instead of flowers, Walt would hope that you will do an unexpected and unsolicited act of kindness for some poor unfortunate soul in his name.

“It turns out that cohabitation doesn’t cause divorce and probably never did,” says Kuperberg. “What leads to divorce is when people move in with someone – with or without a marriage license – before they have the maturity and experience to choose compatible partners and to conduct themselves in ways that can sustain a long-term relationship.”

So what’s the magic age? Kuperberg says it’s unwise to either move in or get married before the age of 23. But other family experts say that’s lowballing it. Economist Evelyn Lehrer (University of Illinois-Chicago) says the longer people wait past 23, the more likely a marriage is to stick. In fact, Lehrer’s analysis of longitudinal data shows that for every year a woman waits to get married, right up until her early 30s, she reduces her chances of divorce. It’s possible that woman may also be reducing her chances of marriage, but Lehrer’s research suggests later marriages, while less conventional, may be more robust.

MH370: Can this be possible? This is from a few days ago. this story keeps getting more and more unbelievable. Sounds like a Clancy thriller.

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky. http://on.wsj.com/1fsKDV5

Malaysian officials say they have no data indicating flight MH370 flew on for hours after last contact as reported by the WSJ. http://on.wsj.com/1kmANcz

So the 18-month-old pup did what she thought was best: She laid on the horn for 15 minutes.

“I came out of the gallery and looked down the street about a hundred yards away and saw a crowd gathered around a car and heard a honking sound,” Graham said, according to the Daily Star. “Then I did a double-take and realized that it was my car and I wondered if it was anything to do with the dog. She was sitting in there casually honking the horn.”

Several onlookers snapped photos and took video of the scene.

“I heard it and thought it was an impatient driver,” one video commenter wrote.

The Express reports that Fern’s anger didn’t subside when she saw Haddow returning.

“Usually when Fern sees me she stands up and gets excited with her tail wagging,” Haddow said. “But this time she just gave me a sideways glance and kept on honking the horn.”

The Harvard Classics, Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks, Open Culture:

Rather than simply curating for posterity “the best that has been thought and said” (in the words of Matthew Arnold), Eliot meant his anthology as a “portable university”—a pragmatic set of tools, to be sure, and also, of course, a product. He suggested that the full set of texts might be divided into a set of six courses on such conservative themes as “The History of Civilization” and “Religion and Philosophy,” and yet, writes Kirsch, “in a more profound sense, the lesson taught by the Harvard Classics is ‘Progress.’” “Eliot’s [1910] introduction expresses complete faith in the ‘intermittent and irregular progress from barbarism to civilization.’”

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Over a hundred years, and several cultural-evolutionary steps later, and anyone with an internet connection can read all of the 51-volume set online. In a previous post, Dan Colman summarized the number of ways to get your hands on Charles W. Eliot’s anthology:

You can still buy an old set off of eBay for $399 [now $299.99]. But, just as easily, you can head to the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, which have centralized links to every text included in The Harvard Classics (Wealth of Nations, Origin of Species, Plutarch’s Lives, the list goes on below). Please note that the previous two links won’t give you access to the actual annotated Harvard Classics texts edited by Eliot himself. But if you want just that, you can always click here and get digital scans of the true Harvard Classics.

In addition to these options, Bartleby has digital texts of the entire collection of what they call “the most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time.” But wait, there’s more! Much more, in fact, since Eliot and his assistant William A. Neilson compiled an additional twenty volumes called the “Shelf of Fiction.” Read those twenty volumes—at fifteen minutes a day—starting with Henry Fielding and ending with Norwegian novelist Alexander Kielland at Bartleby.

What may strike modern readers of Eliot’s collection are precisely the “blind spots in Victorian notions of culture and progress” that it represents. For example, those three harbingers of doom for Victorian certitude—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—are nowhere to be seen. Omissions like this are quite telling, but, as Kirsch writes, we might not look at Eliot’s achievement as a relic of a naively optimistic age, but rather as “an inspiring testimony to his faith in the possibility of democratic education without the loss of high standards.” This was, and still remains, a noble ideal, if one that—like the utopian dreams of the Victorians—can sometimes seem frustratingly unattainable (or culturally imperialist). But the widespread availability of free online humanities certainly brings us closer than Eliot’s time could ever come.

Samel was described as a passionate outdoorsman but also someone who had lived a troubled life. Late Sunday night, Samel was involved in a police chase after he was reported for drunk driving. Following a sustained pursuit, police units ultimately surrounded Samel as he sped toward an officer approaching on foot. The officer and another trooper opened fire on the pickup, killing Samel and injuring the other male passenger.

Samel had been under court orders to not drink after a DUI arrest in September, when he picked up two hitchhikers before crashing into a roadside ditch. Sunday night marked the end of a nearly 30-year criminal history for Samel.

In 1992, Samel was with a group of three moose hunters when they found McCandless almost three weeks after he died. According to Jon Krakauer, when the hunters arrived at the old Fairbanks city bus, a couple from Anchorage were already there but stayed back because of the stench and unsettling SOS note. It was Samel who eventually discovered McCandless in his sleeping bag.

The Spring Break College Tour, A Survival Guide, WSJ.com: Been there, done that.

March Madness is upon us, by which I mean the tradition of taking your high school junior on a manic tour of college campuses. I’ve done it twice now, so I feel that I have some perspective on how to survive it.

As the parent, you have much to offer on this exciting and emotional journey—paying for it and doing the driving. But this limited influence does give you leeway to help design the trip, and here is where you can begin your subtle campaign of influencing where your kid goes to college. Keep your designs sub rosa, because the minute you say, “I’d love to see you at UMass Amherst,” she’ll set her heart on Sarah Lawrence. That one little sentence can cost you $40,000.

You’re only going to have a week or so on the tour, so you’ll have to pick your schools carefully. Most likely your kid will have already assembled a wish list of colleges to see. Don’t feel hurt if those places are far away from you—that is only because she wants to be really far away from you.

Life Animated, Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney, NYTimes.com: What an amazing story. I read a lot and often skim to the end after a certain point. No skimming on this one. I was so amazed by this story, I think I may buy the book, Life Animated, when it comes out. As one friend noted: “No sidekick gets left behind.” Wonderful.

Owen, with his reliance from an early age on myth and fable, each carrying the clarity of black and white, good and evil, inverts this pyramid. He starts with the moral — beauty lies within, be true to yourself, love conquers all — and tests them in a world colored by shades of gray. It’s the sidekicks who help him navigate that eternal debate, as they often do for the heroes in their movies.

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When Owen was 3, his comprehension of spoken words collapsed. That’s clear from every test. But now it seems that as he watched each Disney movie again and again, he was collecting and logging sounds and rhythms, multitrack. Speech, of course, has its own subtle musicality; most of us, focusing on the words and their meanings, don’t hear it. But that’s all he heard for years, words as intonation and cadence, their meanings inscrutable. It was like someone memorizing an Akira Kurosawa movie without knowing Japanese. Then it seems he was slowly learning Japanese — or, rather, spoken English — by using the exaggerated facial expressions of the animated characters, the situations they were in, the way they interacted to help define all those mysterious sounds. That’s what we start to assume; after all, that’s the way babies learn to speak. But this is slightly different because of the way he committed these vast swaths of source material, dozens of Disney movies, to memory. These are stored sounds we can now help him contextualize, with jumping, twirling, sweating, joyous expression, as we just managed with “The Jungle Book.”

So begin the basement sessions. During daylight, we go about our lives. Walt rides his bike to school each morning, back home each afternoon. Cornelia manages the house, the bills, the overloaded schedules of the kids. I am editing and writing for The Journal, putting on my suit and subwaying to the bureau.

kith/kin, amenity kits: He trekked east, then he trekked west … this time CLT to IAD to KWI, then KWI to FRA to CLT … It still amazes me how far you can go in a day. And there are perks of having a spouse who travels internationally for business: 5 days, 3 airlines, one nice hotel with 52 hours on the ground … I get 4 “amenity” kits!

Jesus in the Perfect Storm by the Rt Revd Prof Dr. N. T. Wright, TMBS, Lent: So we are studying NT Wright’s Simply Jesus. As i prepared for class, I found this sermon and enjoyed how it brought the text into Lent …

Who knows what might happen if one of you – ten of you – fifty of you – were to go through this Holy Week praying humbly for the powerful fresh wind of God to blow into that combination of cultural pressure and personal aspiration, so that you might share in the sufferings of the Messiah and come through into the new life he longs to give you? Who knows what God’s power and God’s glory will look like when they steal upon tomorrow’s world from an unexpected angle? If the Son of God is now King of the world, what will that kingdom look like in this next generation?

5 Reasons Why Every Woman Needs a Girls Weekend | Abby Draper: I have the best Girl Weekend group ever!

While spending time with your significant other, children if applicable, colleagues and acquaintances is wonderful and important, every woman needs a good “girls weekend” every so often, at any age. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or elaborate, but a simple few days away from the norm with some women you trust is a special kind of cleanse, especially when you’re going through a tough time.

Food picked up just a few seconds after being dropped is less likely to contain bacteria than if it is left for longer periods of time, according to new research. The findings suggest there may be some scientific basis to the ‘5 second rule’ — the urban myth about it being fine to eat food that has only had contact with the floor for five seconds or less. The study, undertaken by final year biology students monitored the transfer of the common bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus from a variety of indoor floor types (carpet, laminate and tiled surfaces) to toast, pasta, biscuit and a sticky sweet when contact was made from 3 to 30 seconds.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on What the Sahara Desert Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life | Brain Pickings: I am glad that they make almost every high school student studying French read this in French, it is one of my favorites.

In December of 1940, a little more than two years before he created The Little Prince on American soil and four years before he disappeared over North Africa never to return, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry began writing Letter to a Hostage (public library) while waiting in Portugal for admission into the United States, having just escaped his war-torn French homeland — a poignant meditation on the atrocities the World War was inflicting at the scale of the human soul, exploring questions of identity, belonging, empathy, and the life of the spirit amidst death.

One of the most timelessly moving sections of the book, both for its stand-alone wisdom and for its evident legacy as a sandbox for the ideas the beloved author later included in The Little Prince — home, solitude, the stars, the sustenance of the spirit — is the second chapter, written while Saint-Exupéry was traveling aboard the crowded ship that took him from Lisbon to New York

Charlotte police use dirt bikes to catch criminals, Time Warner Cable News: I saw my first one just the other day!

CHARLOTTE — Criminals now have one less place to hide in Charlotte. Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department are now using new dirt motorcycles to patrol woods and walking trails in several patrol divisions in Charlotte.

Steele Creek Division Commander Captain Allan Rutledge says his division is currently utilizing two bikes. He says criminals are using wooded areas to allude police. He says since the bikes have been put in use he’s noticed difference.

“The officers picked up the bikes one day when they were first available and 30 minutes later than made their first arrest,” said Rutledge. “They were actually on the way back from the location where they picked the motorcycles up to our division office where they made an arrest for drugs.”

The bikes have been in use for more than a month. Captain Rutledge says more bikes will be purchased in the near future.

Art and Human Rights, Anna Deavere Smith, Robert McDuffie, Grace Cathedral – Calendar Detail: A labyrinth friend posted another link to Grace Cathedral’s page (the home of the US’s most famous labyrinth and Lauren Artress, the labyrinth movement’s advocate in the modern era) … So I clicked on it and was excited to see Camille McDuffie’s husband Robert McDuffie featured in this recent event. So two of my world’s intersect once again.

Join the Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for The Forum with actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith and renowned violinist Robert McDuffie for a conversation on art and human rights within the context of their performance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail. The Forum is a series of lively conversations about art, faith, ethics and the issues of our day with renowned special guests.

Parker J. Palmer, David Ray’s Thanks Robert Frost:

I ran across this poem the other day, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s a poem about how we relate to the past—a question that’s relevant at any age, not least when you’re old enough to have more past than future!

The past isn’t fixed and frozen in place. Instead, its meaning changes as life unfolds. I once lost a job. At the time, it felt as if I had come to the end of the road. But after a while, I was able to see how that loss helped guide me toward my true life-work. Losing that job was a blessing, not a curse.

I’ve made many mistakes and often failed to live up to my aspirations, but I don’t need to look back with regret. Instead, I can see all of my mess-ups as humus or compost for the growing I needed to do.

I love the fact that the word “humus” is related to “humility.” The good I do today may well have its roots in something not-so-good I did in the past. Knowing that takes me beyond both the sinkhole of regret and the hot-air balloon of pride.

Regret shuts life down. Humility opens it up. So Robert Frost was right. We CAN have hope for the past as well as the future!

pi day, 10 Pies for Pi Day | Mental Floss: I think pi day is a fun way to introduce kids to math concepts. When did you first hear of pi day? It was when my oldest was in elementary school, late 1990s. So what smart fun teacher thought this up? Love pi day … so pi day 2015 will be epic.

Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (or 3/14 in the month/day date format), since 3, 1, and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form. In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day.[2]

Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22 (or 22/7 in the day/month date format), since the fraction 22⁄7 is a common approximation of π.[3]

The earliest known official or large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium,[4] where Shaw worked as a physicist,[5] with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies.[6] The Exploratorium continues to hold Pi Day celebrations.[7]

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Pi Day has been observed in many ways, including eating pie, throwing pies and discussing the significance of the number π.[1] Some schools hold competitions as to which student can recall Pi to the highest number of decimal places.[11][12]

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day.[13] Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28 pm, which they have called “Tau Time”, to honor the rival numbers Pi and Tau equally.[14][15]

The town of Princeton, New Jersey, hosts numerous events in a combined celebration of Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday, which is also March 14.[16] Einstein lived in Princeton for more than twenty years while working at the Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to pie eating and recitation contests, there is an annual Einstein look-alike contest.[17]

Today is March 14th, often notated as 3-14, so it is Pi Day! It’s a day set aside to pay homage to the ratio of a circle to its diameter. The traditional way to celebrate is to eat a pie. Or bake one. Here are some wonderful Pi Day pies you might try.